Schools Give Cell Firms Warm Reception

Cellular phone companies looking to boost coverage in their busiest markets are finding enthusiastic partners in cash-strapped school districts..

Wireless carriers are paying tens of thousands of dollars in rent each year to dozens of Southern California school districts for places to put relay equipment and towers that help plug gaps in phone service.

ABC Unified, which serves Artesia and other cities in southeast Los Angeles County, gets $1,000 a month for phone equipment hidden in a pine tree at school district headquarters in Cerritos. At Dana Hills High in Dana Point, three phone carriers share space on a football stadium light tower.

“It’s a win-win situation,” said Len Forkas, whose Reston, Va., company designs, builds, owns and rents thousands of such poles, including many leased on school property.

The agreements are vital to the booming wireless industry, which has seen a nearly 150% increase in subscribers, to about 132 million, in the last five years.

“Phone companies used to be trying to [sell] the coverage,” said Tom Flynn, director of operations for a Florida company that designs and builds cellular towers and antennas. “But now they’ve got so many subscribers, they need the capacity to handle it all.”

Certainly there are places to put transmitting equipment besides schools. Margaret Brown, spokeswoman for wireless giant Nextel Communications, said only a small percentage of that company’s 15,500 cellular antennas nationwide are on campuses.

Cellular phone companies pay cities and other governmental entities to place transmitting equipment on public buildings in California and elsewhere. Churches also are reaping rewards as service providers try to get antennas placed in bell towers, steeples and sanctuary crosses.

Like churches, schools offer a way into residential areas, where people often are opposed to having unattractive relay equipment dominating the landscape. “We look for the best place to serve our customers,” Brown said. “The best place to locate our equipment is where we have the most customers.”

Nextel’s sites range from a tower on a mountaintop to an antenna connection hidden in a tree at a busy intersection.

School Districts Accept Barter as Well as Cash

Local schools aren’t getting rich as landlords, but the districts have been able to augment their cash-strapped budgets by signing contracts with an array of carriers, or turnkeys who handle their site acquisitions and permitting. One high school traded space on its stadium light pole for construction of a snack bar.

When AT&T; Wireless installed two antennas inside the football stadium at Gahr High in Cerritos in 2000, ABC Unified received $15,000, plus the first $1,300 monthly installment on a lease that expires in 2015, said Gary Smuts, the district’s deputy superintendent.

Most of the money is placed in a fund created to offset costs when the schools host community events, Smuts said. “It’s a break-even proposition,” he added.

Irvine Unified’s contracts with 13 carriers at three schools have generated $552,000 for the district since 1989, with an additional $100,000 on the way by 2005. Moreno Valley Unified receives $14,500 annually for two out-of-the-way sites at Moreno Valley High School. Capistrano Unified gets about $1,000 a month from each of the five carriers that lease space at Dana Hills and Capistrano Valley high schools.

The first agreements were made nearly 20 years ago, and the down payments weren’t always cash.

When the first of Capistrano Valley High’s two cellular towers went up next to the school’s football field, the phone carrier built restrooms for the stadium.

Located in separate square enclosures, the towers share space with a small building that houses a backup generator. One enclosure is at the edge of the school’s track, about 50 feet from the newly sodded southern end zone of the football field.

At one end of the enclosure a sign hanging at eye level reads, “Radio frequency fields beyond this point may exceed the FCC general public exposure limit.”

The low-level radiation emitted from the antennas is a common concern of community groups that occasionally oppose the partnerships between schools and the phone companies.

But the danger of such transmitting stations is generally regarded as negligible. Experts such as John E. Moulder, professor of radiation oncology at the Medical College of Wisconsin, say radio-frequency radiation emitted by mobile phone antennas is too low to be considered a health hazard, as long as people stay a few feet from them.

In a published medical article, Moulder wrote that people should stay clear of the transmitting antennas, but that there was no danger from the towers or masts that hold them.

Bob Sendzik, who manages facilities and planning for Capistrano Unified, said he hasn’t received complaints about the cell towers at Capistrano Valley or Dana Hills high schools, where the first antenna was raised in exchange for the construction of the football stadium’s snack bar.

“We had a public hearing for each pole, went through a whole set of conditions, then had another hearing in front of our board,” Sendzik said. “We had to certify everything met FCC regulations. If they were violated, the pole could be removed.”

District Boards Have Final Say on Deals

The decision to install cellular equipment at schools is usually left to district boards, according to the Department of Education. Based on the FCC’s interpretation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, state or local governments are prohibited from regulating wireless service facilities based on environmental effects.

Before that law was passed, some potential agreements between schools and phone carriers were foiled by residents who complained to local politicians that the towers would be an eyesore.

The stability of the supporting towers in an earthquake or high winds is a concern for some school districts. Palm Springs Unified has spurned offers from several cellular companies because “the liability exceeds the assets,” said Bill Schmidt, director of facilities and planning for the district.

Most local districts have chosen to tuck the transmitting equipment away from classrooms, near the athletic fields on their high school campuses. For example, Capistrano Unified officials say they are “tapped out” of available space at Capistrano Valley and Dana Hills high schools, meaning the district will not pursue additional partnerships.

Sendzik said the district will not allow cellular equipment at its elementary schools, having already turned away one carrier that wanted to do a study.

“We feel that’s not a place for them,” Sendzik said. “On a high school site, you have more space available.”

Local schools seem willing to continue providing homes for cellular equipment just as long as the sites aren’t too intrusive and, of course, the price is right.

In 1989, Irvine Unified entered a five-year, $50,000 contract with carriers that erected cell towers near the Irvine High baseball and football fields. Later, the district added a tower at Rancho San Joaquin Middle School and leased space inside a structure at Woodbridge High.

Each agreement includes a clause allowing the companies to add other carriers to their towers at no additional charge, said Don Chadd, the district’s assistant superintendent of facilities, development and construction.

The only problem, in Chadd’s view, is that the towers at Irvine and Rancho San Joaquin stand out like 80-foot sore thumbs.

“One thing the [school] board realized after the towers went in was they weren’t aesthetically pleasing,” Chadd said. “So we refrained from engaging in cell tower discussions for a number of years.”

That’s about to change. Chadd said he will begin negotiating on sites at University and Northwood high schools, and he plans to be more aggressive this time.

Not only does he believe he can get higher rents, but newer cell antennas are easier to hide.

“Now, they’re capable of making them look much more sophisticated,” he said. “So I told them to bring me something more aesthetically pleasing.”